SwiftVets.com

[carpro]

HOT OFF THE PRESSES!

Sparky has provided us with the startling revelation that John Kerry is a liar.

After repeatedly quoting Kerry as saying about 50 Cal. guns..."which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people.", Sparky has provided us with the information that Kerry, himself, shot a wounded VC with his M-16.

Where did that 50 Cal. M-16 come from?

Stay tuned.
_________________
"If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service."

[Craig]

[Craig]

[carpro]

[sparky]

Well Kerry was wrong if he was trying to say that it was the only available weapon for use against people. At that moment they had use of M-16's.

Strangely, nobody else is asking your question and I think they should. My best answer (below) probably isn't good enough, but I suspect that someone with greater familiarity can explain better what Kerry must have meant.

It seems to be something of an urban myth that a 50 caliber weapon is against the Hague convention when used on people. But it's widely thought to be so and is supposedly found in some training manuals. Or it may be a matter of interpretation that isn't settled and that experts just disagree on.

The more official DOD documents say no, that the .50 caliber is legal to use against personnel. It even broke a sniping record, 2,500 yards (1.42 miles) in February 1967

I think that at farther ranges this was the only available personnel weapon on a swift boat. But the interpretation that it violated a Hague or Geneva convention can't be corroborated by me, for now.

I think that you should ask around. You probably think you'll help damage Kerry, but I think you'll get an answer. I might try to probe this further. Meanwhile, I concede this point. There does seem to be a contradiction.

An interesting article on this.
Wall Street Journal March 24, 1997

When a 24-year-old Marine sharpshooter named Carlos Norman Hathcock II chalked up the farthest recorded kill in the history of sniping -- 2,500 yards (1.42 miles) -- in February 1967, he fired a Browning M2 .50-caliber machine gun. It was a 128-pound behemoth normally used to blast light armored vehicles, shoot down airplanes, strafe ships, and terrify opposing ground forces.

Sgt. Hathcock's amazing shot not only made history. It helped plant an idea that -- thanks to the ingenuity of America's firearms hobbyists and tinkering gun makers -- is now a reality: the .50-caliber civilian sporting rifle.

Today's hot .50-calibers are slimmed-down 30-pound models used to hit bull's-eyes at 1,000 yards, hunt elk and other big game and blast away at coyotes and other varmints. They are the darlings of gun enthusiasts who want what one manufacturer calls "ultimate big-boy toys" -- the most powerful firearms (with a few "elephant gun" exceptions) civilians can legally own without federal registration. Among the rifle's attributes: six times the muscle of a .30-06 deer rifle, an advertised (if disputed) effective range of 3,000 yards (1.7 miles), a bang that can permanently damage unprotected ears, and a traffic-stopping allure at gun shows.

Why the appeal?

"Some people just want the biggest thing on the block," says Skip Talbott, a custom gun maker from Fallon, Nev., who founded the Fifty Caliber Shooters Association (FCSA) in 1985 with Marty Liggins, a smokeless-gunpowder maker from McEwen, Tenn.

"Why do people buy a Ferrari?" asks Mr. Liggins, who named his .50-caliber "Babe."

While some gun makers used scantily clad women to hawk their wares at the recent SHOT (Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade) show in Las Vegas, Lou "the Incredible Hulk" Ferrigno worked the booth of Barrett Firearms Mfg. Inc., of Murfreesboro, Tenn.; he signed autographs and photos of the Barrett 82A1, a 10-shot semiautomatic .50-caliber rifle (suggested retail: $6,800) featured in the movie, "Robocop."

At another booth, McMillan Bros Rifle Co., of Phoenix, showed off its "Boomer" models ($3,700 to $4,100), popular with target shooters. Six other .50-caliber makers at the show offered models priced between $2,500 and $7,000, including a prototype designed by M-16 rifle inventor Gene Stoner called the Stoner SR-50 ($6,995) from Knight's Manufacturing Co., of Vero Beach, Fla.

Lots of .50 owners build their own; that is how the FCSA got started. "Guys would say, `I can hit an ant in the a-- a mile away,'" Mr. Liggins says. "We finally said, `Prove it.'" The group's first match, in 1985, drew only six shooters. At last July's world championships, 108 shooters turned up. FCSA membership has tripled in the past four years to nearly 1,700. Since the rifle crossed into the civilian market in the early '80s, Mr. Talbott says, an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 have been sold to civilians.

For $25 annually, FCSA members get a list of equipment and ammunition suppliers, names of experienced .50-caliber builders and tinkerers they can call for advice, invitations to target matches, and a subscription to the group's quarterly magazine, "Very High Power."

The group's motto, "Dedicated to the sporting uses of the .50 BMG [Browning Machine Gun] Cartridge," is apt. Dedication is what it takes. Competitors shoot from a benchrest at targets 1,000 yards (nearly 0.6 miles) away. They could compete at 2,000 yards, but only the military has ranges that big. Finding 1,000-yard ranges where it's safe to compete is difficult. Noise objections forced them off a range in Williamsport, Pa., and a Phoenix range canceled a match in January after .50-caliber bullets during tests ricocheted over a big hill into a trailer park.

Modern muzzle breaks, which diffuse recoil energy, have greatly reduced the .50-caliber's kick. (An early model blew one designer off the bed of his pickup truck, rupturing his rib cage.) But muzzle breaks make them extremely loud. Gale McMillan, a pioneering .50 designer, says that the only time he fired one without ear plugs, "it felt like you rammed an ice pick down my ear."

For many .50-caliber owners, it was love -- or at least a major shot of adrenaline -- at first sight. "Wow, this would be fun to shoot," Buddy Clifton, an engineer at Allied Signal Technical Services Corp., in Pasadena, Calif., recalls thinking when he first saw one. The first one he fired "absolutely sounded like a bomb going off." Fearing its recoil, Mr. Clifton took two pillows to the range for cushioning. Its kick was more like a shove, he says, no worse than a 12-gauge shotgun. Today, Mr. Clifton holds three world .50-caliber precision-shooting records.

Precision isn't easy. At 1,000 yards, bullets arc perhaps 20 feet up and then down to the target. A four mile-an-hour cross wind can push a round 20 inches awry. Changes in humidity or sunlight can mess up trajectory. Nevertheless, two years ago Craig Taylor, of Vancouver, Wash., put five shots within 3.2395 inches of each other -- the best-ever results of a .50 caliber competition. He owns two rifles, named Alawishus and Floyd. "We're still in the infancy of how accurate these things can get," he says.

That gives Secret Service agents and other law-enforcement officers goose bumps. But the FCSA says the guns are "not a weapon of choice of the criminal" because they are "too large and heavy to be employed in normal criminal behavior."

Still, law-enforcement angst went up a notch after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said it found two Barrett .50s in the arsenal of David Koresh's Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. This caused a temporary panic at the FCSA, which feared a backlash. It commissioned a survey of its members, which found that nearly half were college educated, 37% had incomes above $75,000 annually, and two-thirds were either salaried professionals or business owners. The results were sent to the National Rifle Association to help ward off any anti-.50-caliber legislation.

Firearms above .50-caliber-cannons, generally -- are mostly regulated by the BATF under the Gun Control Act of 1968 as "destructive devices," requiring registration, owner fingerprints on file and a $200 fee. In 1993 the Idaho Fish and Game Commission banned hunting with firearms weighing more than 16 pounds after elk hunters using regular rifles argued that hunting with .50s was unfair. Still, most other states allow .50-caliber hunting.

While the .50-caliber machine gun has been around since 1917, its metamorphosis into a rifle was slow. Mr. Hathcock's sniper record in Vietnam inspired a few homemade rifles. Then came the 1979 American Embassy takeover in Iran. Marine guards wanted something to blow open embassy safes without necessarily destroying classified papers. Around the same time, Ronnie Barrett, a commercial photographer, went to his home workshop to build the first .50-caliber semiautomatic, the Barrett 82A1. An emergency shipment was ordered from Barrett Firearms by the U.S. Marines after the 1983 bombing of their barracks in Beirut, Lebanon.

Though the military versions have since seen action in the Gulf War, and are popular with police SWAT teams, the civilian .50 caliber -- the Branch Dividian discovery notwithstanding -- appears to have remained steadfastly recreational. Even enthusiasts believe its accuracy beyond 1,000 yards is exaggerated. Rock McMillan, who makes some of the most accurate .50s on the market, says: "If you offered me a million bucks to stand 1,500 yards out and let you take one shot at me with the .50 of your choice, I'd probably take it."

(See related letter: "Letters to the Editor: Muzzle Brakes" -- WSJ April 18, 1997)

Credit: Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

[carpro]

[carpro]

[colmurph]

Maybe Sparky can illuminate us as concerns the numerous inconsistancies in the dates of Kerry's Purple Hearts and his fitness reports? Possibly he can tell us why not all of Kerry's fitness reports, NONE of his medical reports and None of his disciplinary reports have been released.

[sparky]

Nah, I'm not going to delve into it. It reminds me too much of the trajectory of Vince Foster's bullet. I got into that and really ended up wasting my time. It bored the sh*t out of me and I actually thought I could convince the Clinton-haters that Hillary-the-lesbian hadn't murdered Vince.

All I see is a bunch of yadda-yadda-yadda when I look over this nonsense about inconsistent dates.

To paraphrase The Who,

Meet the new BS
Same as the old BS